My venerable friend was not hardened by a profession, which has too often the effect of blunting the feelings, even if it does not harden the heart. His disposition and his happy education preserved him from that injury; and as his religion taught him that death was not in itself an evil,—that for him, and for those who believed with him, it had no sting,—the subject was as familiar to his meditations as to his professional practice. A speculation which Jeremy Taylor, without insisting on it, offers to the consideration of inquisitive and modest persons, appeared to him far more probable than the common opinion which Milton expresses when he says that the fruit of the Forbidden Tree brought death into the world. That, the Bishop argues, “which _would have been_, had there been no sin, and that which _remains_ when the sin or guiltiness is gone, is not properly the punishment of the sin. But dissolution of the soul and body should have been, if Adam had not sinned; for the world would have been too little to have entertained those myriads of men, which must, in all reason, have been born from that blessing of ‘Increase and multiply,’ which was given at the first creation: and to have confined mankind to the pleasures of this world, in case he had not fallen, would have been a punishment of his innocence: but however, it _might have been_, though God had not been angry, and _shall still be_, even when the sin is taken off. The proper consequent of this will be, that when the Apostle says ‘Death came in by Sin,’ and that ‘Death is the wages of Sin,’ he primarily and literally means the solemnities, and causes, and infelicities, and untimeliness of temporal death; and not merely the dissolution, which is directly no evil, but an inlet to a better state.” As our friend agreed in this opinion with Bishop Taylor; and moreover as he read in Scriptures that Enoch and Elijah had been translated from this world without tasting of death; and as he deemed it probable at least, that St. John, the beloved disciple, had been favoured with a like exemption from the common lot, he thought that Asgill had been hardly dealt with in being expelled from Parliament for his “Argument,” that according to the Covenant of Eternal Life, revealed in the Scriptures, man might be translated from hence, without passing through death. The opinion Dr. Dove thought, might be enthusiastic, the reasoning wild, the conclusion untenable, and the manner of the book indecorous, or irreverent. But he had learnt that much, which appears irreverent, and in reality is so, has not been irreverently intended; and the opinion, although groundless, seemed to him any thing rather than profane.